Am not sure why this was a flop in the US

Rating: 7/10 (8 September 2005)

I didn't have high hopes for The Island as I heard it had not done very well in America, despite starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. However, I was pleasantly surprised as I found it watchable and exciting, despite some cheesy dialogue and implausible action.
It's the year 2019 and the population lives in 'the Institute' as the outside world is contaminated. Every so often, someone wins the 'Lottery' and can go and live on 'the Island'; the last uncontaminated area in the world. Everyone wants to win the Lottery! However, we (the audience) know that there is something else going on here! Lincoln 6 Echo (McGregor) accidentally stumbles across the real reason why people get sent to the Island - everyone at the Institute is a clone paid for by someone in the outside world to harvest if they need an organ transplant or to have a baby without going through pregnancy for example. He manages to escape with Jordan 2 Delta (Johannson).
The film then changes pace as Lincoln and Jordan are on the run from a group of mercenaries hired by Dr Merrick (Sean Bean), the head of the Institute, to recapture the 'products'. A high-octane (and highly improbable) chase sequence ends with Lincoln and Jordan tracking down Tom Lincoln (the sponsor of his Lincoln 6 Echo). There follows some amusing (perhaps not intentionally funny) scenes with two Ewan McGregors on screen with 6 Echo trying to get Lincoln to help him expose the Institute.
The Island seems to be caught between being a futuristic sci-fi film (with its elements of outside contamination, an unobtainable Utopia, cloning) and being an action, shoot 'em up type of film and ends up being neither one or the other. Don't go and see it if you expect to see an intelligent examination of the ethics about cloning, but if you want to go and see a good thriller which is a bit different to other action films out at the moment, then you can't go too far wrong!